User blog:Blupo/The State of the Wiki
EDIT (3 May): Rewrote a lot of things, worded better to include moderators as well as admins, new poll * EDIT (4 May): Added notice * EDIT (5 May): Clarify screenshot of the abuse log * EDIT (7 May): Do nothing was a mistake * EDIT (10 May): The admins have returned ---- Hello everyone. We've gained a mass of editors large enough to revert vandalism in a timely fashion. Thank you to Rmfrncs, NightcoreRayRay, and everyone else for maintaining this wiki recently. Enforcing the Guidelines There is a serious problem that no editor can handle, however, because they do not have the ability to. There has been a considerable increase of messages and comments where Robux are involved. As you know, this is against the Guidelines. But if editors can't delete those types of messages, who cares if it's against the rules? There's no one to enforce the Guidelines. Anyone can do whatever they want, whenever they want, save for a few actions prohibited by the abuse filter. (Note that this issue is not soley about Robux trades, but they have seen a considerable rise, so I focused on them.) If you don't believe that Robux trade comments are a problem, take a look at this image: This image shows the last 18 entires in the abuse log (which keeps track of when edits are triggered by an abuse filter) captured 6 hours into 3 May. 17 of the 18 entries on the list were triggered on 3 May, and 15 of those 17 were triggered by the filter that detects Robux trades. It's clear that people are using Robux to trade even though it's against the Guidelines, but who cares if no one's watching? (You can click to see the other times it was triggered by Robux trades.) Admins and moderators are supposed to be enforcing the Guidelines, but none of them have done any substantial enforcement for a while. To get their attention, we either need to message them through the wiki or through Discord. This isn't ideal, because comments that violate the Guidelines (like the ones selling stuff for Robux) just sit around until someone wants to message them. And do it again every time a new message comes up. Pages that need to be deleted sit around until someone wants to ask them to delete them. Meanwhile people can spam those pages. Another problem is that they might be inactive, so messaging them won't even help. As the enforcers of the Guidelines and the ones with the power to do so, they should be here frequently enough so that these things aren't problems. Anything else can be done by the editors, which we have enough of. Why? There are several possible reasons why they haven't been coming onto the wiki to check in. # They're inactive. They left the wiki and now their account sits around doing nothing. # They're moderating the Wiki Discord chat. This is the most likely reason. The people moderating the wiki also moderate the Discord chat. It's faster-paced, and people need to be aware of messages coming in very frequently. # They think that everything is going fine on the Wiki. Consider this. There were two vandalism raids recently: one in March and one in April. The March raid was reverted by admins, and everyone involved was blocked, including some former admins. The April raid was reverted by editors, and no one was blocked until the admins were told about it. Now, the March wiki raid was also accompanied by a Wiki Discord chat raid. The people moderating the Discord chat saw this and also checked in on the wiki, and saw it was also raided. But since the chat wasn't raided in the April attack, they never checked in, and they never had a reason to. It would make a lot of sense if they're busy moderating the Discord chat. A Solution While admins and moderators are not the core community of a wiki, they are vital to enforcing rules and doing elevated tasks that normal editors cannot. As a community, we can do some things: * Ask them to come back to moderating the wiki. That would be stretching them thin, considering that they already moderate the Discord. It would become difficult to properly moderate either if they have to moderate both. I would rather have the second option: * Ask them to add new moderators and/or admins. Perhaps you think that we need more people moderating the wiki. While they moderate the Discord, new people can moderate the wiki. We can give them moderator rights. Moderator rights are lower than admin rights, mostly that admins can block people while moderators cannot. What do you think we should do? What should we do about the situation? Ask them to come back Ask them to add new admins/moderators Do nothing Extra Links * * * About admins * About content mods * About discussion mods Category:Blog posts